This is a continuation of Part 1, posted on January 12, 2012. Please read the beginning of this journey before continuing.

As we stood in southern Idaho gazing at the Craters of the Moon, I remember thinking that this was what the moon’s surface was like (well, not in those exact words – remember I wasn’t even five yet!). Man had not set foot on the moon yet – it would be another few years – but in my young mind, I figured someone knew what it looked like and had made this place to resemble it. Little did I realize that the Craters of the Moon was formed from lava flow.

We left Idaho and began our trek northwest toward Ellensburg, Washington. We were going to the Gingko Petrified Forest before visiting friends and family.

And we have arrived! Mom and I in front of the tourist center. Notice how I’m always squinting or trying to cock my head at just the right angle to get the sun out of my eyes? I don’t know why Mom wasn’t looking at the camera – she was probably people watching (a favorite past time of her’s!).

And a look at the information inside the tourist center. I thought it was really neat because the “petrified” trees looked like pretty rocks (which I collected and loved!). I do seem to remember something about my parents telling me that I couldn’t pick up and keep anything on the ground because it was part of the “forest.”

The Washington State Park website explains that the unusual “forest” was discovered in the 1930s when highway construction unearthed the petrified trees.

And a last look at the waters off of the Wanapum Recreational Area.

On September 10th our family arrived in Seattle. Mom and Dad knew a family who resided there from their time in Japan when they were all stationed there with the Army Air Corps (and then Air Force).

Darreld and Marilyn Manning and son with Mom, Dad and I. Check out the head scarf I am wearing – apparently it was rather windy at the top of the Space Needle. Their daughter (also a red head as is their son) isn’t in this picture. I don’t remember why – maybe she was afraid to go outside for pictures. While we were at their house, we enjoyed a home cooked (or grilled) meal and a fairy boat ride to Victoria, British Columbia complete with a sightseeing tour of the area (pictures below).

All too soon it was time to leave the Manning family and head to our next stop – my grandmother’s sister’s home in Puget Sound. John and Nellie Lilly had been living in the area for many years. Nellie was almost four years younger than my grandmother and had been living “out west” since she was a teen due to her asthma. Nellie and John had raised a son and a daughter and were enjoying their “golden” years and grandchildren. My Aunt Nellie was especially proud of her flowers! They had a beautiful home with a spectacular view. I remember my parents telling me not to get too close to the edge because it was a long drop to the water.

It was time to head south into Oregon. What would we see there? And how much longer until we get to Disneyland?

Stay tuned for the next installment of our journey “Over the Rainbow”.

Sources: personal knowledge and written description published in the Beavercreek News (Beavercreek, Ohio), Oct. 19, 1966.

Photos: Photographer on all photos – Gene Amore**; all photos – print, slide, digital in the possession of Wendy Littrell to be used as needed. No reprints without permission. (**Photograph of family at Space Needle taken by Unknown with camera owned by Gene Amore to be used by him.)

Copyright for this blog post 2011 Wendy J Littrell.
No part of this blog post may be used or reproduced without explicit permission from the author and must be linked back to this blog.

Mary Angeline Werts was born to William Washington Werts and Louisa Bookless on February 16, 1855 in Linton Township, Coshocton County, Ohio. Her father died when she was two years old leaving Lousia to raise Mary and her older brother, George. In the 1860 Census both children are living with others. In 1961 Louisa married John Simon and three years later they had a daughter, Sarah Ellen. On December 14, 1872, Mary married William Henry Amore. In 1881 Mary lost her brother, George.

Mary – known as “Annie” and “Henry” had seven children – a daughter first, followed by six sons (“Clemmie”, “Zade”, Roy, Lloyd, Rollo, Bert, and Clarence). The family was very involved with the Salvation Army. I just didn’t realize how involved Annie was until I ran across an article from the Coshocton Tribune dated December 14, 1941 (nine days after Annie passed away).

In the “Fife and Drum” column written by Al Cline, he stated, “Back a quarter century ago, at the Christmas times even before the first World war, you might have seen a tiny, birdlike woman, her face rosy with cold, standing on one of Coshocton’s snow-swept street corners, ringing a Salvation Army bell.” He went on to state that before many people knew what the Salvation Army was is when she joined as one of its first members. She was called “Mother” Amore, and as Cline reported, “very few people knew her first name was Mary. And there is no record how many derelicts she took into her little house, gave a bed and breakfast and sent on their way, because the true spirit of Christmas was with Mother Amore the year round.”

There were many Sundays she walked from her home in Roscoe to the Salvation Army home so she wouldn’t miss a service. My great-grandmother (her son Lloyd was my grandfather) saw the new citadel finished in 1929 when she was in her 70s. Unfortunately that was about the time she fell and was hurt pretty bad. The columnist reported that for more than ten years after her fall, Mother Amore was “an uncomplaining invalid, tied to her bed and crutch.” Salvation Army Captain Douglas Bethune told Al Cline that he always had a strange feeling in her house; one that felt as if she was comforting him instead of the other way around when he came to call on her weekly after her fall.

Cline summed up his story by writing, “I guess this is a story of faith. Mother Amore had faith, like an imperishable little . . . flame, burning inside her and shining thru her eyes. It took faith and vision to help build the snug Salvation Army citadel, and it took faith to lie calmly in bed, at 86, and wait for the quiet touch of death.”

As I read that article, tears sprung from my eyes. No, I didn’t know my great-grandmother in the traditional sense (I also did not know my grandfather as he died six years before I was born). I didn’t even really know her through memories of others. The only thing my dad has said is that she was in bed all the time. He was an adult by the time she died – so perhaps I can find out more about this woman from him.

However, I did learn a lot about this woman, just from this article. It told me that she didn’t complain about any hardship that she encountered. Whether she learned this at a young age from losing her father and then her brother and being “farmed out” from her mother, I don’t know. I have a sense that she seemed to always have a sense of purpose – helping people, nurturing them, giving hope to others, and bringing the word of God into the lives of those who didn’t know Him.

I have three pictures of Annie – the picture above is one that my cousin, Sharon Amore Brittigan, uploaded to Ancestry. The picture below is one that my family has also shared with me of Henry and Annie and their children. One other photo I have shows the couple surrounded by loving family members on the occasion of the first Amore reunion held at their home.

Annie died on December 5, 1941 seven years after losing her husband, Henry. Her funeral was held in the Salvation Army citadel and she was buried in Roscoe Cemetery.

Summer in the mid-1960s (not sure which year). This picture was taken at my paternal aunt’s home in Zanesville, Ohio. Pictured left to right: my 1st cousin, June (my dad’s oldest sister’s daughter), my Aunt Eva and Uncle Bervil (my dad’s brother), my Aunt Gertrude (Dad’s oldest sister), Eric (June’s grandson), and me. Notice the span of ages between my first cousin – who has a grandchild a little younger than me – and me!

I haven’t seen June or Eric since the real early 1970’s. The last time I saw my Aunt Gertie was in the summer of 1972. I saw my Uncle Bervil and Aunt Eva for the last time in the late 1960’s. Luckily, I am now in touch with their son, grandson’s, great-granddaughter’s, and their daughter.

Twenty seven years ago today, I was at work when my boss, the owner of the printing company for which I worked, opened the door to the graphics room and told me I had a phone call. It was early afternoon and I still had an hour or so of work yet. No one usually called me at work. As soon as I heard my brother’s voice, I knew. I knew because that was how I had envisioned it happening a week or so before. It wouldn’t be my mom calling me or anyone else – it would be my brother. The words he spoke brought forth too many polarizing emotions. I didn’t have to wonder anymore about when it would happen. I knew that a life lived had been to the absolute fullest. I knew that while everyone else in the family would be falling apart, that I would draw on my inner strength and remain strong for them. This woman we spoke of had been a constant in my life since birth – the only grandmother that I knew. When it seemed that my life was falling apart throughout different periods, she was my champion. When I was at my absolute lowest and disappointing everyone else, she hugged me and let me know that no matter what she wouldn’t be mad at me and would love me unconditionally. Walking into my grandparents’ apartment later that evening and seeing my grandfather all dressed up in a suit – for he had been waiting to go see his beloved wife – stabbed my heart. My mother expressed that my grandmother had really wanted to see her newest great-granddaughter, my baby, just a little over a month old, and had never gotten to. I broke down in grief.

Within a week the family gathered to remember this matriarch of our family. We laughed and we cried. Six of us – grandchildren and great-grandchildren – were pallbearers. It was such a cold day – the day we carried the casket out of the church into the waiting hearse. Snow covered the ground. We traveled to the cemetery and had a final service in the chapel. It would be several more years before I went to the gravesite. When I did return, it would be to visit not only my grandmother and my mom’s baby sister, but also my grandfather, who wasn’t able to go on after the love of his life was gone. He passed away a year less a day after she did.

Like me, my grandmother was a child of divorced parents. When I was young and going through the rough patches of my parents animosity, she would always comfort me and tell me she knew what I felt. As a young child, I used to spend weekends with my grandparents. I was the youngest of their eight grandchildren – by fourteen years – so to say that I was spoiled by them is an understatement! In my defense, I never asked for them to spoil me and in their defense, during the time the others were young and growing, my grandparents lived in Germany and were always traveling due to my grandfather’s military duty or for pleasure. They missed a lot of holidays and birthdays with my siblings and cousins.

Vesta Christena Wilt was born on May 7, 1898 in Noblesville, Indiana to Joseph N. Wilt and Martha Jane Stern. She was the oldest girl and fourth child. Another daughter and son followed her. Before she was 12, her parents had divorced. Her mother married her widowed brother-in-law, Frank Clawson. The family moved from Noblesville to Anderson, Indiana and on Easter Sunday 1916 she met the man she would spend the rest of her life with. Vesta dated Glen Roy Johnson for several months and the two got married at Martha and Frank’s house on Christmas Eve 1916. The following December their first child, a son named after his father, was born. As the years went by the family added their first daughter, Genevieve, and then a second daughter, Mary (my mother), and lastly baby Lois Evelyn who was born prematurely and died just a little over 2 months later.

My grandmother knew her own heartache. She was separated from her beloved Glen for quite awhile while he went to training for the Signal Corps and then went overseas to France during WWI. She had been separated from her mother and two youngest siblings after Martha moved to Oregon before my mother was born. She lost a baby and then much later watched her oldest daughter suffer from a brain tumor and ultimately succumb to another inoperable one. She lost the father that she hadn’t seen for so long without having that estranged relationship mended. As the years wore on, she watched her youngest daughter struggle and grieve for the end of an almost 30 year marriage. She lost her mother and three brothers. She sat by her husband’s hospital bedside for months as he recuperated from a blood cot on his brain that he had suffered in a fall.

Then her health began to fail. She wasn’t a stranger to health issues – having one ailment and surgery or another throughout her adult life. But after she broke her elbow in the early 1970s, she was never as healthy as she had been. All too soon she was experiencing a heart attack every three months. I was very scared about losing her – not only for myself but for what it would do to my mother. After hospital stays and a change in her diet and medication, it seemed she rallied from the heart issues (although they were still there).

The family would gather for a surprise birthday we had for her at our house. She was so surprised when she walked in through the garage to the dining room and most of her family. Then there was the 60th wedding anniversary celebration at their apartment complex. Long time friends, church friends, military friends, and the family and extended family came to honor them. We were only missing one of my cousins and her family.

I moved away for awhile and when I returned back to my hometown, I realized just how she had aged – my grandfather too. I knew that as the years had ticked by, time was winding down for their life among us. My grandfather had been the one who had several health issues before I had moved away and I guess I had thought that he might be the one to go first. Then she was hospitalized and then again several weeks later. That visit was one she wouldn’t return home from. I learned later that she had told the apartment manager as the EMTs were wheeling her to the ambulance to make sure her husband would be okay. Did she know she wouldn’t come home? Did she decide that it would be okay to go if it was her time?

My grandmother – Vesta Wilt Johnson – born on May 7, 1898 – died on January 19, 1984. My grandfather – Glen Roy Johnson – born November 21, 1898 – died on January 18, 1985. They were the glue of the family. There are times during holidays and celebrations, the family left an empty chair – in honor of our grandmother. Our Beloved Nana – the woman whose “grandmother” moniker I have assumed for my own grandchildren – the woman whom I will never live up to as a grandmother – the woman who is always beside me in times of trouble – smiling and cheering me on.

The center of our home was – and always has been – the kitchen. The above pictures (photographer: Gene Amore, held privately by Wendy Littrell) show the eat-in kitchen of the house I grew up in. This was where smaller, family birthdays were celebrated; where the holiday meal preparations were done; where my dad marked the heights of me and my niece and nephew on the recessed door; where we’d sit at the table while talking on the telephone; and where I’d spend my meal times.

Dad and Mom preparing a Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner

The kitchen was the place I could find my mom if she wasn’t at her sewing machine or out in her flower beds. She liked to cook and bake. She taught me how to cook in this kitchen.

Mom by the stove

On one side the kitchen was accessed by an open doorway that led into the formal dining area and on the other side it led into the living area – a recessed wooden door could close it off.

This was not the kitchen my mom used for the last 32 years of her life but it was the kitchen I’ll always think of when remembering childhood meals and ocassions.